Bush Unplugged But Unrevealing

How can a president of the United States talk for almost two hours, unscripted, and be so fundamentally unrevealing?

Promising his Midwestern audience insights into his worldview and decision-making process, Bush yesterday made a little news here and there, but mostly killed time with stale sound bites and folksy banter.

Just by virtue of his speaking so long, the meandering talk at Kansas State University generated zillions of column inches this morning in which reporters dutifully recorded the one genuinely new development -- his rechristening of "domestic spying" as "terrorist surveillance" -- as well as his playful digs at his wife, his hemming and hawing when asked about that gay cowboy movie, and so on.

And simply by taking a baby step outside his protective bubble and fielding unscreened questions (most, but not all of them, softballs) from a starry-eyed, solidly red-state audience, he garnered buzz about being forthcoming.

But he wasn't.

Ultimately Bush unplugged gave a performance of remarkably little substance. There was no new thinking on display. There were no real insights shared. Instead, we heard mostly restatements of policy, familiar phrases and even whole stories recycled from the 2004 campaign.

"I'm here to tell you how I see the world and how I've made some of the decisions I've made and why I made them," Bush promised at the start of his speech. But he did so in only the most simplistic terms.

"My most important job is to protect the security of the American people," he said. On the topic of sending troops into harm's way: "And so when I'm telling you I made the decision, you all have got to understand, I did not take that decision lightly." On his job: "If I had to give you a job description, it would be a decision-maker. I make a lot of decisions."

Yes, Bush spoke at his greatest length yet about the National Security Agency's domestic spying program. But it was still only a few minutes, and he focused mostly on the now-familiar White House arguments for why he thinks he has the right to do what he did. He did not really explain what the program is, how it works, why it was necessary -- or why he chose not to go through existing legal channels or ask Congress for permission.

He frowned on the term "domestic spying" -- "I would call it a terrorist surveillance program," he said.

This will inevitably launch a new war of words between conservative and mainstream press organs. But was Bush willing to say definitively that only terrorists were surveilled? Or was he prepared to at least discuss what standard of evidence was required? No. Not a word.

Here's how Suzanne Malveaux summed things up on CNN: "Working without a script before 9,000 people, most of them students, the Kansas State University event, aides say, was designed to shake up the traditional lecture series by giving the president a format where he could be himself to plainly explain to Americans why they should support his Iraq policy, and his controversial domestic spying program, which he referred to as his terrorist surveillance program. . . .